e Northwest Passage, which
Franklin so narrowly missed, fell to Robert McClure (1850-53) and
Richard Collinson (1850-55), who commanded the two ships sent north
through Bering Strait to search for Franklin. McClure accomplished the
passage on foot after losing his ship in the ice in Barrow Strait, but
Collinson brought his vessel safely through to England. The Northwest
Passage was not again made until Roald Amundsen navigated the tiny
_Gjoa_, a sailing sloop with gasoline engine, from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, 1903-06.

Yankee whalers each year had been venturing further north in Davis
Strait and Baffin Bay and Bering Sea, but America had taken no active
part in polar exploration until the sympathy aroused by the tragic
disappearance of Franklin induced Henry Grinnell and George Peabody to
send out the _Advance_ in charge of Elisha Kent Kane to search for
Franklin north of Smith Sound. In spite of inexperience, which resulted
in scurvy, fatal accidents, privations, and the loss of his ship, Kane's
achievements (1853-55) were very brilliant. He discovered and entered
Kane Basin, which forms the beginning of the passage to the polar ocean,
explored both shores of the new sea, and outlined what has since been
called the American route to the Pole.

Sixteen years later (1871) another American, Charles Francis Hall, who
had gained much arctic experience by a successful search for additional
traces and relics of Franklin (1862-69), sailed the _Polaris_ through
Kane Basin and Kennedy Channel, also through Hall Basin and Robeson
Channel, which he discovered, into the polar ocean itself, thus
completing the exploration of the outlet which Kane had begun. He took
his vessel to the then unprecedented (for a ship) latitude of 82 deg. 11'.
But Hall's explorations, begun so auspiciously, were suddenly terminated
by his tragic death in November from over-exertion caused by a long
sledge journey.

When the ice began to move the ensuing year, his party sought to return,
but the _Polaris_ was caught in the deadly grip of an impassable ice
pack. After two months of drifting, part of the crew, with some Eskimo
men and women, alarmed by the groaning and crashing of the ice during a
furious autumn storm, camped on an ice floe which shortly afterwards
separated from the ship. For five months, December to April, they lived
on this cold and desolate raft, which carried them safely 1300 miles to
Labrador, where they were picked up by the